


A Wanderer and a Scavenger

by Clamour_for_Glamour



Category: Tintenwelt-Trilogie | Inkheart Trilogy - Cornelia Funke
Genre: Angst, Dustfinger's complete inability to stay in one place, Dustfinger's inability to stay in one place, Guilt, It's just really hard to write anything happy for Dustfinger, Making the best of things, Open Relationship, Roxane - Freeform, Roxane understands him, dustfinger - Freeform, implied bisexuality, inconstancy, or with one person, relationship, soul searching, yes this might be a setup for writing his adventures in our world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 06:56:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16192415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clamour_for_Glamour/pseuds/Clamour_for_Glamour
Summary: Examining the dynamic of Dustfinger and Roxane's relationship before he was read out of the book.





	A Wanderer and a Scavenger

**Author's Note:**

> Roxane is often referred to as Dustfinger's wife, but the comment from Cloud Dancer before Dustfinger sees her again, about the parentage of his daughters, implies that their relationship was never formalised.

He had never been able to settle. Not to a place, a person, a career. Even his performances changed place and structure, technique and style. 

There were two constants in his life. Fire, and Roxane. 

She hasn't teased him, like the others had, back when they were young. She was the first girl, in truth the only woman, who ever truly touched his heart. Long ago when he was first trying to secure her affections his friends had shaken their heads, wondering why he even tried. Even the Black Prince had been supportive but not hopeful, gently reminding him of his wandering nature. But Roxane had been different. She had never sent him away when he crept back to her side after days or weeks without sending word, his pockets filled with gifts and his mouth with apologies. She simply watched him with her dark, dark eyes. Calmly waited until he ran out of words and stared at the floor. Then she would reach out and pull him to her, and kiss him as if nothing had happened.

It was all the same to her, then and always. Whether he had spent four months travelling in the depths of the Wayless Wood, a fortnight to a lordly castle for a performance that had been too well paid to turn down, or a single night with a laughing girl whose swinging hips he had followed to her home from the market. 

“Love me truly when you are beside me. Remember me while you are away,” she used to say. After he got his scars, she still loved him, but her farewell speech gained the line “And keep yourself safe.” 

He had never kept secrets from her, and as they got a little older, he left his shame at his wanderings behind. She would drink in his tales of water nymphs and trees that reached the sky as they sat beside the campfire of the motley folk. She would laugh uproariously, kicking her feet as she gasped for breath and her long raven hair fell into her eyes, at his imitation of leaping to hide under the bed when a woman's husband arrived home unexpectedly.

He called her his wife, but ran from the idea of getting married. When his daughters were born, his friends teased him about being a father and settling down. Despite the fact that Roxane occasionally enjoyed a few hours with a beautiful man or woman, though less frequently than he himself did, nobody thought for a second that the babies had been conceived by anyone else. Sometimes, when the children were being cared for elsewhere, Dustfinger and Roxane would fall into bed together with somebody, and she preferred it that way to when they did it apart. As much as they might be fond of or even really care for other people, they never truly loved anyone except each other.

He knew she loved him as much as he loved her, with a deep and burning feeling that was as close to the fire as he had ever experienced. Beautiful and painful and always, eventually, calling him home. It didn’t matter that they travelled from place to place. He wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of being tied to a building forever. Home was Roxane’s arms, the light glinting off her hair and the smell of her skin. And even that, with so much love, he could never stay constant. But she forgave him. No. She did not even see it as something which needed to be forgiven. 

It made it easier to stay in this strange world, knowing that even after so long she would know that if he was still alive he would come back to her. It meant he did not feel guilty about finding friendship or companionship or sex in this new place. He was just doing what he had always done, and being who he had always been. Roxane loved him, and one day he would go home.


End file.
